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We’re moving! From this month onward, Shore Poets will be on the final WEDNESDAY of the month, at the Canons’ Gait cellar bar on the Canongate. It’s a great, central venue which we’ve used before and we’re delighted to be returning. The evening will begin and end at the usual times (7.00-9.30) and, of course, we’ll be bringing you the same mix of excellent poetry and music. We hope you can join us on the 29th at the Canon’s Gait.

Claire Askew is the author of poetry collection This changes things (Bloodaxe, 2016), which was shortlisted for an Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and the Saltire First Book Award, among others. She is also a novelist, and her debut novel All The Hidden Truths won the 2016 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize as a work-in-progress. The novel was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2018, and was a Times Crime Book of the Month. Claire’s second novel, What You Pay For, is coming in August 2019. Claire currently works as Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

SHORE POET: KATE HENDRY

Kate Hendry is a writer, teacher and editor. She has taught English and creative writing universities, prisons and schools. She is a trustee of StAnza, Scotland’s international poetry festival. Her poetry and fiction has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her first poetry collection, The Lost Original was published by HappenStance Press in 2016. She has edited three anthologies for the Scottish Poetry Library: The Poem Goes to Prison(2010), Tools of the Trade: Poems for New Doctors (2016) and To Learn the Future: Poems for Teachers (2018).

NEW POET: DOROTHY LAWRENSON

Dorothy Lawrenson was born in Dundee and grew up in Fife. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Texas State University, and is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. She has published in journals including Gutter, Edinburgh Review, Irish Pages and Lallans, and in the anthologies Whaleback City, Double Bill, Be the First to Like This and A Year of Scottish Poems. In a previous life she was a painter and graphic designer, and the editor of Perjink Press.

MUSICIANS: WILLIAM & DAVID HERSHAW

Father and son duo William and David Hershaw are two of the main creative forces behind The Bowhill Players, a group who celebrate their homeland Fife and its mining heritage through music. William is an acclaimed poet who has published multiple collections. His pamphlet Winter Song won the Callum MacDonald Memorial Award in 2003, and he won the McCash Prize for Scots Poetry in 2011. David is a popular songwriter, guitarist and producer known for playing with fiddler Sandie Forbes and with Edinburgh-based americana trio Paper Sparrows.

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. We may also have some excellent poetry books to raffle. If you’re lucky, you may get to choose – cake, or poetry?

We will have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat. Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

Join us for a spring evening of poetry and music at the Outhouse Bar. We’re delighted to welcome Gaelic poet, Peter Mackay to Shore Poets. We’re also excited to announce that Miriam Gamble has joined our team – so this is her first reading as a Shore Poet.

This is our last meeting at The Outhouse Bar. They’ve been brilliant hosts, but we’re ready to try something different – a new day and venue. From May 29th, Shore Poets will be on the final WEDNESDAY of the month, at the Canons’ Gait cellar bar on the Canongate. Same time (7.00-9.30) and mix of excellent poetry and music.

Peter Mackay’s first collection Gu Leòr was published by Acair in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the year. His work has appeared widely in magazines, newspapers and on radio, and been translated into German, French, Irish, Czech, Slovak and English. He is also co-editor of An Leabhar Liath (Luath, 2015). He was born and raised on Lewis, and now lives in Edinburgh and works as a lecturer at the University of St Andrews. His second collection, Some Kind Of, should appear later in 2019.

SHORE POET: MIRIAM GAMBLE

Originally from Northern Ireland, Miriam Gamble lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her collections are The Squirrels Are Dead (2010), which won a Somerset Maugham Award, Pirate Music (2014), and What Planet(2019), all published by Bloodaxe. She has been a mentor on the Clydebuilt and Ledbury Emerging Critics programmes and a judge on the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year Award.

NEW POET: NICK-E MELVILLE:

nick-e melville is a poet, teacher and occasional artist with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Glasgow.

he has had 13 small press publications, and has been anthologised in various publications, been exhibited and been an exhibitionist.

one future book will be ABBODIES COLD, hopefully Autumn this year, as well as the anthology Makar/Unmakar: 12 Poets in Scotland (Tapsalteerie) in a couple of months.

MUSICIAN: FIONA FORBES

Fiona Forbes is a member of the long-standing vocal trio Sangsters, and is a recording artist on Greentrax. With an eclectic musical taste, Fiona has sung jazz and popular contemporary music but is best known for singing Burns and Traditional material.

Fiona was involved with the award-winning Far, Far from Ypres show, which won “Event of the Year” at the 2019 Trad awards and which was a hugely enjoyable project for all the show’s cast. Fiona was the only female singer in the “Pals” regiment CD which preceded the show.
Well known locally as a compere and volunteer in Kirkcaldy Acoustic Music Club which completes the list of Fiona’s wide-ranging involvement and interest in music.

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We should have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

Helena Nelson is a poet, critic, editor and publisher (HappenStance Press). Her first collection was Starlight on Water (Rialto 2003). This was followed by Plot and Counter-Plot (Shoestring, 2010), and a light verse collection Down With Poetry! (HappenStance, 2016). Another light verse pamphlet (Branded) is due out from Red Squirrel later this year.

SHORE POET: Martainn Macan t-Saoir | Martin MacIntyre

Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir (Martin Macintyre) and his family live in Edinburgh. He has been a Shore Poet since 2010. He works as a medical doctor and a writer and is involved in a number of Gaelic initiatives in the city. He was brought up in Lenzie near Glasgow, his father being originally from South Uist.

He is an author, bard and storyteller and has worked across these genres for many years. His early poetry was published in Let Me Dance With Your Shadow in 2006, and in 2007 he was crowned ‘Bard’ by An Comunn Gàidhealach. He has been interested in Gaelic songs and singing for many years and has competed at various National Mods and reached the final on a number of occasions including 2017.

Besides his poetry and two novels he has written two collections of short stories: the first in 2003, Ath-Aithne (Re-acquaintance) – recently translated into French – won The Saltire Society First Book Award; while his latest collection, Cala Bendita ’s a Bheannachdan (Cala Bendita and its Blessings), was shortlisted for both The Donald Meek Award and The Saltire Literary Book of The Year in 2014.

NEW POET: Roseanne Watt

Roseanne Watt is a poet, filmmaker and musician from Shetland. She was the winner of the 2018 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, and runner-up in the 2018 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her first collection, Moder Dy, will be published by Polygon in May 2019

MUSICIAN: Andy Shanks

Andy Shanks is an award-winning singer-songwriter from the North East of Scotland. He is best known for his work with Jim Russell on their critically acclaimed album ‘Diamonds in the Night’ and for his songs which have been recorded by many artists, most notably June Tabor.

His solo set is a journey though stories and characters he has met on the way, often moving from traditional to jazz and country depending on the tale. Lyrically, his songs conjure up close observations of the characters and landscapes of Fife and Aberdeenshire, often taking a swipe at contemporary Scots culture. Andy has toured extensively in Scotland and as far afield as North America, recording and performing with many fine musicians. He most recently worked with Christine Kydd on her new album ‘Shift and Change’.

He is also a passionate advocate for Scottish writing and culture, most recently appearing in the BBC documentary ‘The Promised Land’ championing MacDiarmid’s ‘A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle’ and its place in Scotland’s cultural revolution.

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. We may also have some excellent poetry books to raffle. If you’re lucky, you may get to choose – what will it be? Cake, or poetry?

We will have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat. Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

Our next Shore Poets event will celebrate the last ever Mark Ogle Memorial Award (MOMA). Over twelve years, the award has commissioned work from some of the UK’s finest poets. Their poems have been gathered together in a pamphlet of all the stimulus and response poems. Watching Sunlight will be launched at the event, with copies available for a donation to a cancer charity.

Please join us on Saturday March 2nd, at the Cornerstone Centre, St John’s to hear the 2019 winner of the Mark Ogle Memorial Award: Jim McGonigal.

Jim will be joined on stage by previous winners: Anna Crowe, Vicki Feaver and Tom Pow. Angus Peter Campbell hopes to be with us, as does Meg Bateman, if the tide is right. Music will be provided by Shore Poets favourites, The Whole Shebang.

Mark was one of the earliest members of Shore Poets and one of the first to read at the group’s original venue, the Shore Gallery in Leith. His untimely death left his considerable poetic talent under-realised. His family decided to commission an annual award in which a poet, selected from the poets who had read at Shore Poets in the previous season, responded to one of Mark’s poems.

The Mark Ogle Memorial Award

JIM McGONIGAL

His poetry includes the prize-winning Passage/An Pasaíste (2004) and Cloud Pibroch (2010), both from Mariscat Press, and The Camphill Wren (2016) from Red Squirrel Press. His most recent work is Turning Over in a Strange Bed (Mariscat Press, 2017). His biography Beyond the Last Dragon: A Life of Edwin Morgan (2012) won a Saltire Award, and he co-edited The Midnight Letterbox (Carcanet Press, 2016), a selection of the poet’s correspondence 1950–2010.

ANNA CROWE (winner 2013)

photo credit: Swithun Crowe

VICKI FEAVER (winner 2016)

TOM POW (winner 2012)

and hopefully…

ANGUS PETER CAMPBELL (inaugural winner 2008)

MEG BATEMAN (winner 2014)

MUSIC: THE WHOLE SHEBANG

The Whole Shebang is an Edinburgh-based collective, formed in 2011, who play good-time music, from show tunes and standards through blues, country and western to contemporary pop.

Happy New Year! The first Shore Poets event 2019 season is almost upon us and we’d love you to join us! Please come along and help us celebrate our first selection of poets for this year. We’re delighted to welcome back honorary Shore Poet and much-loved Edinburgh poet Diana Hendry. She’ll be reading alongside her partner; the poet, publisher and current Shore Poet, Hamish Whyte. If you haven’t heard them read together before, you’re in for a treat. They’ll be joined by Rex Sweeny who is this month’s new poet and our musicians – the talented trio, Tribaiser.

Diana has published six collections of poems, including Making Blue, Borderers and Late Love & Other Whodunnits (all Peterloo Poets) and The Seed-Box Lantern: New and Selected Poems (Mariscat). Her most recent collection is The Watching Stair (Worple Press, 2018). In 2015 she collaborated with Douglas Dunn and Vicki Feaver in Second Wind (Saltire Society/Scottish Poetry Library): poems on ageing.

She has also written over 40 children’s books, including the Whitbread-winning Harvey Angell and recently The Seeing which was shortlisted both for the Costa Prize and Scottish Book of the Year. A junior novel, Out of the Clouds, came out from Hodder in 2016, with a sequel, Whoever You Are,in 2018. Her short stories have been widely published and broadcast.

She was the first writer in residence at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary and from 2008 to 2010 she was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She has recently co-edited New Writing Scotland.

Janice Galloway has commented: ‘Diana Hendry’s poetry has a wonderful sense of the author’s voice, dark and bitterly sweet at the same time, like high-grade chocolate.’

Hamish has had three collections of poems published by Shoestring Press, A Bird in the Hand, The Unswung Axe and Things We Never Knew (the last published 2016). A pamphlet Now the Robin came out from HappenStance Press in 2018.

He has also edited many anthologies of Scottish literature, including Mungo’s Tongues: Glasgow Poems 163-1990, An Arran Anthology, Kin: Scottish Family Poems, Scottish Cats (Birlinn 2013) and most recently Ten Poems About Robins (Candlestick Press, 2018).

He runs Mariscat Press, publishing the poetry of Edwin Morgan, Stewart Conn, Douglas Dunn, Jackie Kay, Gael Turnbull, Christine De Luca, Diana Hendry and Jim Carruth among others. In 2015 Mariscat won both the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award and the Michael Marks Award for poetry pamphlet publishing. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, a member of Edinburgh’s Shore Poets and plays percussion with the band The Whole Shebang.

His long poem Window on the Garden was reviewed in Scotland on Sunday as ‘impossible to describe, like Joni Mitchell and James Joyce deciding to rewrite Thomson’s The Seasons in the style of Sappho.’

Originally from Sussex, Rex Sweeny spent twelve years in Oxford before moving to Scotland and has lived in Edinburgh since 1989. He organises and hosts the annual CultFusion poetry event for Leith Festival and his work has appeared in The One O’Clock Gun, Torn Pages and the 2013 anthology New T@les From The Old Town.

MUSICIANS: TRIBAISER

A group of three Heriot-Watt musicians, and more so very good friends, comprising of Fraser Sharp, Kyle Kinnear and Jack Lodge playing drums, jazz keys and trombone respectively. The trio is set to enjoy its second consecutive year playing at the event following a year of musical road trips and music courses around the West and North coasts of Scotland!

AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, and of course provides one lucky winner with a very excellent lemon cake. Sometimes we have poetry pamphlets in the raffle too.

Useful information:

If you would like to be notified of our monthly events, please follow this blog, by clicking the follow button in the corner. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

We’re back at the Outhouse bar this month, on Sunday 28th, for a vibrant and varied evening of poetry and music. We’re delighted to welcome Tom Pow as our headline poet. Alongside Christine de Luca and Tammy Adams, we’re in for an entertaining and lively evening. But don’t forget that the clocks go back this weekend!

Our Open Night will be on November 25th, when much of the evening is handed over to up-and-coming poets.

The signup period is now open. Please throw your name in the hat for two, 3-minute readings by email only to shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com by the end of the day on Saturday 10th November. We’re looking for ten poets and will select on a first-come-first-served basis.

MAIN POET: TOM POW

Tom Pow has written across a range of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, drama and works for children. But he is primarily a poet. His work explores the domestic, but it also travels to other places and other periods. Dear Alice, Narratives of Madness concerns the legacy of a nineteenth century lunatic asylum, while A Wild Adventure is a speculative poetic biography of Thomas Watling, a Dumfries forger transported to Botany Bay. In The Becoming, New and Selected Poems, was published in 2009 and Recolectores de Nueces, a bi-lingual selection of poems, translated by Jorge Fondebrider, was published in Mexico in 2016. He can be heard at The Poetry Archive. His most recent publication is Barefoot: the collected poems of Alastair Reid of which he was editor.

Credit: Sophie Kandaouroff

SHORE POET: CHRISTINE DE LUCA

Christine De Luca lives in Edinburgh. She writes in English and Shetlandic, her mother tongue. She was appointed Edinburgh’s Makar for 2014-2017. Besides several children’s stories and one novel, she has had seven poetry collections and four bi-lingual volumes published (French, Italian, Icelandic and Norwegian). She’s participated in many festivals here and abroad. Her poems have been selected four times for the Best Scottish Poems of the Year (2006, 2010, 2013 and 2015) for the Scottish Poetry Library online anthologies and her pamphlet collection Dat Trickster Sun was short-listed for the Michael Marks pamphlet prize. Paolozzi at Large in Edinburgh, co-edited with Carlo Pirozzi, is being launched at Blackwell’s on Thursday 31st – it includes new poems in English.

NEW POET: TAMMY ADAMS

Tammy lives in Dunbar and is a member of Tyne and Esk writers. She started writing poetry in 2014 and has seen poems published in The Interpreter’s House and on Lighten Up Online. She has also provided poems to no-poetry magazines The Scottish Planner and Full Potential, the magazine produced by Downs Syndrome Scotland. She was longlisted in this year’s Plough Poetry Prize and has previously been a top 10 finalist in a Poems on a Beermat competition. Some of her poems are inspired by her work as a town planner. Other spring from random thoughts or events. She loves writing poetry as a way to shoo words and worries out of her brain, and to bring a smile to people’s faces.

MUSICIAN: DAVID HEAVENOR

David Heavenor is a Scottish singer songwriter based in Edinburgh. He has produced six albums plus two EPs and can often be heard on BBC Radio Scotland’s Iain Anderson programme. ‘I’m Watching Rosanna’ was described as ‘an insightful song…. beautifully written and observed’ by Iain Anderson on BBC Radio. Ricky Ross, of Deacon Blue, named ‘Jenny & the Cold Caller’ as ‘one of the best songs ever written…’

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

We will have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

Useful information:

If you would like to be notified of our monthly events, please follow this blog, by clicking the follow button in the corner. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Shore Poets is back for a new season and, for this month, at a new, central location. We’re also trying out Wednesdays! Let us know what you think about both time and place. This month’s meeting will take place in the café-bar at Eden Locke at the west end of George Street. It’s a lovely venue, with delicious patisserie, great coffee, a full bar and comfy seating. Oh, and on September 26th, some great poets! We’re delighted to begin our 208-19 season with a reading from the brilliant John Glenday and do hope you can join us at –

Eden Locke

127 George Street, EH2 4JN

Wednesday 26th September 2018

7pm – 9pm

MAIN POET: JOHN GLENDAY

John Glenday is the author of four poetry collections. The Apple Ghost (Peterloo Poets, 1989) won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and Undark, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for 1995. His third collection, Grain (Picador, 2009) was also a PBS Recommendation and shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. His fourth collection, The Golden Mean, (Picador, 2015) won the Roehampton Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year.

SHORE POET: JANE MCKIE

Jane McKie’s collections of poetry are Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press, 2007), When the Sun Turns Green (Polygon, 2009), and Kitsune (Cinnamon Press, 2015). In 2011 she won the Edwin Morgan poetry prize and published a pamphlet, Garden of Bedsteads, with Mariscat Press, a PBS Choice. Her most recent pamphlet is From the Wonder Book of Would You Believe It? (Mariscat Press, 2016). She has an academic background in Psychology, Anthropology, Philosophy and Literature, and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh and an Advisor to the Edwin Morgan Trust.

NEW POET: ALICE TARBUCK

Alice Tarbuck is a writer and academic living in Edinburgh. Her first pamphlet, Grid, was published in spring by Sad Press. She has undertaken commissions for Timespan Festival in Helmsdale, and Scottish PEN. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and she is part of 12, a female poetry collective based in Edinburgh.

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We will have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

For our final event of the season, we’re delighted to welcome Miriam Nash and Samuel Tongue to Shore Poets. They’ll be joined by Graham Walker on saxophone. Please join us at The Outhouse on the last Sunday of June for a summer evening of poetry and jazz.

Sunday 24th June 2018, 7pm (doors open 6.30pm)

Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY

Admission: £5 (concessions £3)

Please be there in plenty of time to get a seat. Unfortunately, fire regulations mean we have to turn people away if the room becomes overcrowded.

MAIN POET: MIRIAM NASH

Miriam Nash was born in Inverness and grew up in Scotland, England and Wales. Her first poetry collection, All the Prayers in the House, was published by Bloodaxe in 2017. She has performed her work internationally and brought poetry in schools, museums and prisons in the UK, USA and Singapore. Her collection won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2015 and was runner-up in the Edwin Morgan Awards 2016. In 2014 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to complete a MFA at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

NEW POET: SAMUEL TONGUE

Samuel Tongue’s first pamphlet collection is Hauling-Out (Eyewear, 2016) and his second, stitch, is forthcoming with Tapsalteerie in June. Poems have featured in publications such as Blackbox Manifold, Compass, Envoi, Gutter, The Herald, Interpreter’s House, Magma, Northwords Now and The Scotsman, and the anthologies Be The First to Like This: New Scottish Poetry, Best New British and Irish Poets 2016 and the SPL’s Best Scottish Poems Anthology, 2016. Samuel held the Callan Gordon Award as part of the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awards 2013. Samuel is currently co-editor (with Susie Maguire) of New Writing Scotland and teaches Religion, Literature, and Culture at the University of Glasgow.

SHORE POET: KATE HENDRY

Kate Hendry joined Shore Poets last year. Her pamphlet, The Lost Original, was published by Happenstance Press in 2016. Her poetry and short fiction has been published in various magazines, including Compass, Gutter, Mslexia, Harpers, New Writing Scotland, The Reader, Rialto, and The North, and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories 2016, Writing Motherhood and Scottish Cats. She has edited two collections of poems for the Scottish Poetry Library: Tools of the Trade for newly qualified doctors, and To Learn the Future, for teachers. She is herself, an English Teacher.

MUSICIAN: GRAHAM WALKER

Graham Walker is a tenor and soprano saxophonist from the Orkney Islands. Graham recently returned to Scotland after 35 years, the last 23 of which were spent in Belgium (home of the saxophone) where he played with many of the best Belgian jazz musicians. Graham will perform a selection of tunes from the jazz repertoire, as well as more abstract improvisation.

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE
The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We should have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

For our May readings, we’re delighted to welcome two brilliant Edinburgh-based poets to Shore Poets – Alan Gillis and Sarah Stewart. They’ll be joined by Rob MacKillop, performing a world premier of The Manfred Suite by guitarist-composer, Gordon Ferries. Please join us on the last Sunday of the month for a great line up. If you’d like to read a poem alongside our trio of wonderful poets, please bring a poem with you and put your name in the hat at the door – we’ll pick a ‘wildcard’ poet to open the evening.

Sunday 27th May 2018 7pm (doors open 6.30pm)

Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY

Admission: £5 (concessions £3)

Please be there in plenty of time to get a seat. Unfortunately, fire regulations mean we have to turn people away if the room becomes overcrowded.

MAIN POET: ALAN GILLIS

Alan Gillis is from Belfast and now lives in Scotland, where he teaches English at The University of Edinburgh. He has published four poetry collections with The Gallery Press: Scapegoat (2014), Here Comes the Night (2010), Hawks and Doves (2007) and Somebody, Somewhere (2004), which won the Strong Award for Best First Collection in Ireland. He has also been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize, and for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. In 2014 he was selected as a ‘Next Generation Poet’ by the Poetry Book Society in the UK. As a critic he is author of Irish Poetry of the 1930s (2005), and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (2012), both published by Oxford University Press. From 2010-2015 he was editor of Edinburgh Review. A Selected Poems entitled Scapegoat and Other Poems was published in the USA by Wake Forest Press in 2016.

SHORE POET: FRANK GLYNN

Frank has been writing poetry and prose for many years, with several novels in his drawer. He plays violin and viola in several ensembles around Edinburgh, in The Whole Shebang, in Holm, and in the St Andrew Orchestra. He is the music facilitator for Shore Poets.

NEW POET: SARAH STEWART

Sarah Stewart is a writer and editor based in Edinburgh. She was a UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence in Krakow in 2017, and her poetry has appeared in Anon, Gutter, The Honest Ulsterman, Mslexia, New Writing Dundee, The Pickle Jar, The Scotsman, and in the anthologies Be The First To Like This: New Scottish Poetry and Best Scottish Poems 2014. Her first pamphlet, Glisk, was published by Tapsalteerie this month.

MUSICIAN: ROB MACKILLOP

Rob MacKillop is guitar player with a wealth of experience in different styles and periods, from medieval Scottish music on lute, through to free improvisation on acoustic archtop guitar. For his visit to the Shore Poets he will be showcasing a new guitar (if it arrives from the luthier in time!), and will include a new improvisation based on the poetry readings he hears at the meeting. Rob will be playing a world premier of a specially commissioned piece by guitarist-composer, Gordon Ferries. It is a five-minute piece for classical guitar, based on the Byron play, Manfred.

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE
The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We should have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

See you on 27th May!

Useful information:
1) we have a mailing list, and if you haven’t signed up yet, here’s your chance: just click right here and fill in the few bits of information. This is usually only for event notifications and things like ‘looking for slam/open night participants’. You can unsubscribe anytime you want to, although we would be sad if you did.
2) Our email address (take out spaces on either side of the @) is shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com. Emails sent to any other email address go to the great rubbish bin in the virtual sky.

Our headline poets (no Shore Poet slot this month!) are Diana Hendry and Stewart Conn. Stewart Conn is one of Scotland’s leading poets. He was born in Glasgow but has lived in Edinburgh since 1977, where until 1992 he was head of radio drama for BBC Scotland. He was Edinburgh’s first Makar, or Poet Laureate, 2002-2005. His collection The Breakfast Room (2010) won the SMIT Book Awards Poetry Book of the Year. His most recent publication is Estuary (Mariscat Press 2012) and The Touch of Time: New & Selected Poems is forthcoming next month from Bloodaxe Books. He is Honorary President of Shore Poets.

Diana Hendry is an Honorary member of Shore Poets. She has published five collections of poems. Her latest, published last year, is The Seed-box Lantern: New & Selected Poems (Mariscat Press). She has also written over forty books for children, including Harvey Angell, which won a Whitbread Award, and recently The Seeing, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize.
She has been Writer in Residence at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Edinburgh University. She lives in Edinburgh.

In a change to our original billing, our new poet will now be Lesley Glaister. Lesley is well-known for her fiction writing, but has only recently begun to compose poetry. The Shore Poets feel privileged to offer her a first-ever poetry reading slot in Edinburgh. We hope lots of you will come and help us to welcome her.
We hope that William Letford, originally billed as our new poet for the month, will join us sometime in the 2014/15 season.

This month we will also be presenting the Mark Ogle Memorial Award to Meg Bateman. Meg Bateman was born in 1959 in Edinburgh, studied Gaelic at the University of Aberdeen, and holds a PhD in Classical Gaelic religious poetry. Her first collection, Òrain Ghaoil / Amhráin Grá was published, with facing Irish translations by Alex Osborne, in 1990. In English, the title is “Love Songs.” Poems from Òrain Ghaoil were republished in Aotromachd agus Dàin Eile in 1997. Meg’s third collection, Soirbheas, was published in 2007. She lives in Skye with her son and teaches at the Gaelic college, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.

We’ll have live music this month from Holm. Holm is Frank Glynn (violin/viola) and Stewart Veitch (electric guitar). They are an eclectic duo who play arrangements of music by Ron Sexsmith, Charlie Haden, Erik Satie, Manuel de Falla, Elvis Costello and Hildegard of Bingen among others, as well as their own compositions. They have a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/HolmDuo

As usual, we’ll also have our two wildcard slots up for grabs, where YOU can read alongside this amazing line-up! Just bring a poem you’d like to perform, put your name in the hat when you arrive at the door, and wait to see if your name is picked!